Remembering Dad During Allergy Season.

A foggy head

laying low in a foggy heart.

A ragged start.

 

A sinus silo

filling in with pressure grain.

What a pain.

 

Little I think

above the mucus descent.

My thoughts are bent.

 

A nasal muse

a mist to be sprayed.

How I prayed.

 

I saw my dad with a Kleenex

hanging from the right side of

his nose.

Time froze

as I remembered him saying

hello with the dangling

participle waving in the wind.

I guess it is better than

watching a drop form on

the tip of his facial protrusion.

 

I’ve watched that too.

 

His leaky facial facet

running up a bill.

I wanted to tighten his ear

to dam up the trickle.

Lefty loosey, righty tighty.

 

I suppose the muse cut through

the mucus today

and I am on my way.

 

Touch

I held the Kleenex and she blew.

The temptation was to command, “again.”

She always said “again”

when I was runny-nosed boy.

 

I put a dot of balm on my pinky

and glided it onto her mouth.

She used to orbit her lips

with a red stick while I stared.

 

I touched her toes,

one little piggy at a time.

She counted all mine

when I arrived fifty years ago.

 

I held her hand and counted freckles.

Some were age spots now.

My finger touched the giraffe spots.

There is one on my arm too.

 

I combed her hair with my fingers

and she calmed down,

down like her eyelid’s slow descent.

Tears descended as I closed mine.

 

 

For my mother.

 

© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.